After experiencing a potentially traumatic event - a car accident, a physical or sexual assault, a sports injury, witnessing violence - as many as 1 in 5 children will develop Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) rates peak in women later than they do in men. Researchers writing in BioMed Central's open access journal Annals of General Psychiatry found that men are most vulnerable to PTSD between ...

Researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health assessed the geographical distribution of the long-term burden of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in a region of Liberia and report that the prevalence ...

Bright light therapy has significant effects on sleep disturbances associated with combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder, according to a research abstract that will be presented Monday, June 7, 2010, in San Antonio, ...

(PhysOrg.com) -- Drugs known as HDAC inhibitors may prove useful in treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), according to a study conducted by faculty at The University of Texas at Austin's Waggoner Center for Alcohol ...

Two new longitudinal studies show that age played an important role in the effects of the September 11, 2001 (9/11) terrorist attacks on New York City. Both studies appear in a special section on children and disaster in ...

Posttraumatic stress disorder

Posttraumatic stress disorder (abbreviated PTSD) is an anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to one or more traumatic events that threatened or caused great physical harm.

It is a severe and ongoing emotional reaction to an extreme psychological trauma. This stressor may involve someone's actual death, a threat to the patient's or someone else's life, serious physical injury, an unwanted sexual act, or a threat to physical or psychological integrity, overwhelming psychological defenses.

In some cases it can also be from profound psychological and emotional trauma, apart from any actual physical harm. Often, however, incidents involving both things are found to be the cause.

PTSD is a more chronic and less frequent consequence of trauma than the normal acute stress response.

PTSD has also been recognized in the past as railway spine, stress syndrome, shell shock, battle fatigue, traumatic war neurosis, or post-traumatic stress syndrome.

Diagnostic symptoms include reexperience, such as flashbacks and nightmares; avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma; and increased arousal, such as difficulty falling or staying asleep, anger, and hypervigilance. Per definition, the symptoms last more than six months and cause significant impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning (e.g. problems with work and relationships).